The use of web enabled mobile computing devices is a growing and ubiquitous factor in customers searching for and finding offers from merchants. An inherent safety problem with such mobile device use is that its user can be distracted in ways that are hazardous to both user and bystanders. By way of example, the user may make the mistake of operating a vehicle or walking near vehicular traffic while using the mobile device's physical or virtual keyboard to give input and/or view output rendered on its display screen. It would be an advance in the art of mobile commerce to provide an application for web enabled computing devices that allows their users to search for, find, and place offers from merchants without requiring physical or virtual keyboard input or display screen rendered output viewing.
Merchants may use techniques to prompt consumers into making a particular purchase. These techniques may be in the form of monetary incentives, relying on the principle that a lower price will result in increased sales. Merchants may employ these techniques, for example, to help clear inventory before a new season's merchandise is released, to ease the release of a new product, to increase sales near the end of the fiscal year, to compete with a competitor over particular products, or to generally spur sales. Monetary incentives may come in the form of a “sale” (i.e., temporary reduction in price at the register), a discount coupon, a mail-in rebate (i.e., a refund of part or the entire purchase price by mail), or a store credit (i.e., credit that can be applied to another store purchase). These incentives may only apply to a particular product and have a time component. For example, a sale may only apply to a particular brand of dishwasher purchased on a particular holiday weekend and a rebate may only be valid for computers purchased within two weeks before the start of classes at a university. Although consumers are typically incented to make purchases by a form of price reduction, non-monetary reasons may also motivate consumers to make purchases with a merchant, for instance where the consumers believes that the merchant is a force for good and thus the consumers are non-monetarily incented to do business with the merchant who they deem worthy of such support. There exists a need for platforms, systems, methods, devices that may provide a non-monetary incentive motivate a consumer to conduct a transaction with a merchant, or at least an alternative.
Another problem for merchants, especially small to mid-sized merchants, may be that an increasing number of transactions are conducted online instead of inside brick and mortar stores. Online transactions conducted with larger merchants can represent a loss in sales to traditional small and medium size merchants whose main business method to attract sales may be a traditional retail, brick and mortar store environment, instead of mail orders, telephone orders, and/or electronic commerce (e-commerce) transactions. The loss of the in-store purchase may be a lost opportunity for the local merchant and local customer to get to know each other, personally, and a lost opportunity for the local customer to become a live advertisement for the merchant's retail store and its wares. Online sales also prohibit the traditional brick and mortar merchant from an opportunity to sell customers in a retail environment best understood by the merchant. The loss of in-store purchases to online sales may cause economic problems for traditional small and medium size merchants and the communities they serve. In some neighborhoods, the number of small retail shops may dramatically decline, leaving community commercial areas in a state of blight and disuse. In addition to economic downturn sensitivities, small, family-owned stores also face extinction threats from sophisticated online retailers, with resultant losses to local community retail diversity and neighborhood health with the death of the neighborhood ‘mom-and-pop’ store. Neighborhood streets can seem vacant during the day and open only after 5 p.m. to serve the interests of only one demographic, namely young urban professionals with disposable income. Previously successful businesses have been closing when e-commerce competition from online auctions and retailers attract previously loyal neighbors.
There exists a need for platforms, systems and methods that may shift sales revenue towards neighborhood merchants away from electronically competing merchants. There exists a need for platforms, systems and methods that may shift sales tax revenue towards neighborhood authorities that would otherwise be lost to e-commerce transactions, or at least alternatives. There exists a need for platforms, systems and methods that incents local merchants in the community to receive foot traffic from customers that are incidentally doing in-person shopping with other brick and mortar merchants, or at least alternatives. There exists a need for platforms, systems and methods that provides an incentive to a customer, who would have otherwise only window-shopped a product at the brick and mortar store of a local merchant but then buy that product on-line from an electronic competitor merchant, to buy that product at the brick and mortar store of the local merchant.